Britain's information commissioner will have to wait until Friday UK time for a warrant" to look at the databases and servers used by data analytics company Cambridge Analytica, the firm that is alleged to have used data of more than 50 million Facebook subscribers for targeting voters in the US presidential election.
Elizabeth Denham had demanded access to the company's servers by 6pm UK time on Monday. She later said she had decided to seek a warrant as the company did not make any move to meet her demand.
In the interim, Facebook sent a digital forensics team from Stroz Friedberg to audit the Cambridge Analytica data but asked them to hold off once it learned of Denham's intentions.
In a statement on Thursday UK time, Denham's office said: "A High Court judge has adjourned the ICO’s application for a warrant relating to Cambridge Analytica until Friday.
{loadposition sam08}"The ICO will be in court to continue to pursue the warrant to obtain access to data and information to take forward our investigation.”
The allegations about Cambridge Analytica were made by a former employee, Christopher Wylie, and reported by London's The Observer and The New York Times over the weekend.
The data was collected in 2014 by Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher, using an app that requested people to take a personality test for academic research.
About 270,000 people took the test; its creator, Aleksandr Kogan, called the app he was using “a very standard vanilla Facebook app".
Given the terms of service of the app and the existing Facebook API, the app also collected the data of friends of those who responded.
Kogan later passed on the data to data research firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for President Donald Trump’s election team. The newspaper reports said what was handed over was information about more than 50 million people.